Alfred's Act of Love
Every Robin is at least a passable marksman.
Bruce hates the fact and fights it every time a new bird dons the uniform.
And every time, Alfred Pennyworth looks him in the eye and tells him, "I am not losing any more of you than I have to."
What defense could there be against that?
So a few months into each Robin's training, Bruce will look at them and tell them they have the weekend off... From him.
Alfred steps in at that point. They don't use the bat cave - Alfred knows the echoing gunshots (even muffled) will trigger his oldest charge. No, Alfred belongs to a respectable club and they have ranges for use. He kits his charges up in passably high quality clothes and packs a lunch.
His charges are spoiled little rich things to most of the world and he doesn't care to change that impression now. He chats with his fellows and talks up the Wayne brood's carelessness, ensuring that he'll have plenty of space. He takes them to the farthest end of the range and everyone else will spread the story of silly rich kids and they'll have peace.
It is an act of love when he carefully demonstrates how to disassemble and reassemble each hand gun he's brought.
(For the bigger guns he will manufacturer an emergency to take Bruce away from the house so they may make use of some of the sprawling Wayne property.)
Only when each child can field strip a gun in under a minute can they move onto firing the things.
Dick's only experience with guns came from trick shooters he met travelling around America with Haly's - they usually didn't last long because archers generally made better showmen.
Jason had mostly negative experience with guns, but he'd at least fired one before. Bashfully he explained that guns were a common commodity and as a younger lad he'd gotten one and went shooting cans down near the train yard.
Tim had actually been shooting with his father, but only with rifles because they went hunting with a client of his father's one year. Tim confessed that he cried when they actually bagged a deer, but Tim's aim was very good regardless of his misgivings.
Stephanie hadn't been allowed to come to the manor, much less spend idle time with Alfred when she was Robin. Nonetheless, when she stepped back onto the vigilante scene, Barbara made sure to send her his way. She was a good student and learned just as fast as any of his other charges.
Damian came to be Robin with the skills of a marksman already. Alfred had not thought he would be called upon to instruct him, but Dick surprised him by mandating that Damian's skills be validated by Alfred.
"It's tradition," Dick said later, after Damian had retired to his own quarters. "And one day he'll appreciate it."
There was no arguing with Batman, Bruce's or Dick's. So the very next weekend, Alfred packed a lunch while Dick and Barbara stressed to Damian that he behave around civilians and listen to every direction he was given.
Damian still complained the whole time, but years later he would recall the weekend with fondness. In time he would learn that everyone participated in Alfred's training and each of them valued it just as much as any lesson from Bruce.
Alfred couldn't follow them and keep them safe. Teaching them what he knew was the next best thing.
Every time a Robin, past or present, took aim, Alfred was there guiding their hand.
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Dove Cameron’s Alchemical album is so fucking bat coded I feel like a conspiracy theorist.
(This went off the rails at one point, so WARNING: vague mentions of sexual assault and being drugged without consent)
First song: Lethal Woman.
Cass, all over, right? The bridge is “she walks like a saint, floats like an angel, sharp like a knife under the table”
c o m e o n
Second song: Still.
“Man on the screen, they only see whatever you want them to see” and “Supernova self-erasing, hourglass is always draining”
Could be either Tim or Bruce, but I lean toward Tim because of “how dare you, dare me to love you, if you jump I will too” because whenever Tim decides he loves someone, he’s the ride or die, ends of the earth type, even if they don’t even know who he is. A) how and why he became Robin in the first place, B) The Cloning Thing, C) an argument could be made for the Captain Boomerang thing (but now that I think of it, I think I’m mostly basing this off fanon oh well ontotgenextone).
Song Three: Breakfast.
I will admit out the gate that this one’s a reach, so I’m just going to leave Selina here.
Song Four: Sand.
For this I’m thinking Tim or Jason, for different reasons.
For Tim;
“I saw the end when we began, you couldn’t love the way I can, I tried to bargain with the stars, for more than half your heart but you have more pieces of me than the dessert has sand, and I have less pieces of you than I could hold in my hand” and “our love’s misaligned, ‘cause you’re on my mind every night, I stretch out the time, and now I know why.”
I’m just making it obvious I read the Red Robin run, aren’t I?
For Jason:
“What's worse, being wanted but not loved, or loved but not wanted? What's worse, hearing what you wanna hear, or hearing what's honest?” And “What hurts, is the one thing that you wanna do, is the one thing that you shouldn’t do”
Pre-death Jason, but like, right after the Garzonas thing.
Song five: White Glove.
Okay hear me out.
This is part one of the Dick Grayson saga; the persona he shows to the public. This is Richie Wayne. This is every honeypot mission he went on too young, every woman he’s had to seduce for information (it’s one hundred percent happened before don’t fight me) every source of sexual trauma (that one I’m ninety percent sure is canon) that keeps him up at night.
And this guy’s been a vigilante for over twenty years, he can absolutely recognize drugs by sight, smell, and how they feel when he’s too late to notice something slipped in his drink. He’s felt nearly every strain of fear toxin and every one of Ivy’s pollens. If anyone knows their drugs it’s pretty boy Richie Wayne and Robin.
Song six: God’s Game
This one I’m definitely taking some lines out of context, but for Jason, “Just a boy with a man's face, playin' God's game” is when he’s taking over Crime Alley, pit-mad and trigger happy. “I prepare with so much care, I was runnin', it was stunnin', I am desperate from delusions, not much of a solution, never knowin' what the truth is, oh, God” is when hid plans start to fall apart, when Bruce slits his throat with a batarang, when eventually the pit-madness eventually starts to wear off and he realizes what all he did to Tim, who was a child at the time, not to mention Robin.
He nearly became what the Joker was to him to the next Robin, and I feel like at some point that would occur to him.
Song seven: Boyfriend.
(…Admittedly, I don’t think this one has any grounding in canon and if it does, feel free to educate me.)
So, obviously I could mention Kate Kane at this point, but I know basically nothing about her, so instead I’m going to talk about Steph.
So Steph has definitely had some shitty experiences with guys, right? Like, her dad to begin with, but also the guy who got her pregnant (at like fourteen? Maybe I’m just sheltered, but I don’t think anything about that relationship was heathy—again, I haven’t read many of the comics, so correct me if I’m wrong), then Tim, which, I love him as a character, but didn’t he date her in the mask for like, months, and I have some vague recollections of some dickish things he said (i know i know i need to read more comics)—whatever. Men are shitty.
I have a scene in my head. Like, Steph’s in college, at a bar with friends or something, maybe it’s an under cover op, idk, and there’s this girl she’s been lowkey watching all night. She doesn’t quite know why, but she just keeps catching her eye, and okay, it’s not like she’s never questioned her sexuality, she knows Cass. There have been Extensive conversations with Babs on the subject.
Anyway, so at some point, there’s obviously some sort of argument between the girl and the guy she came with and the girl’s crying, and Steph just Can’t Handle That.
She goes up to her, comforts her, makes a new friend, listens to the whole story.
And at some point, she has the thought.
“I could be a better boyfriend than him.”
She doesn’t necessarily do anything about it that night, but now that she’s had the thought, it won’t leave her alone.
Yeah. So. Maybe I’ll write that story later.
Song eight (last song): FRAGILE THINGS.
Dick Grayson part two; So your mentor (dad) just died, leaving you an angry murder child, another one hanging on by a thread after losing eighty percent of his support system, a grieving butler (grandfather), and a mantle the size of the Most Dangerous City in America. Any direction you move is going to hurt someone, and one kid is more likely to snap and murder people than the other, and hey, if you have to be Batman anyway, might as well let your brilliant kid brother be Nightwing, right? Except, whoops, you forgot to mention that last part and now Timmy thinks you just replaced him without telling him and fuck you knew you were forgetting something and now there’s a goddamned imposter Bruce and—
“Love is like a house of fragile things, where hearts can be broken as easy as antiques, and now there’s glass all shattered at my feet, what we built together, you left in smithereens.”
Anyway. This got kind of incoherent (or maybe it was from the start?)
I accidentally added a poll at the bottom and can’t figure out how to remove it, so.
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